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Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Health Ministry: Police will release Thaqif's autopsy report, not us

The Health Ministry says it forwarded the post-mortem report on the death of Al-Jauhar tahfiz student Mohamad Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi to the police last week, and will leave it to them to inform the family about the boy's cause of death.

Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam said this was because the case was still being investigated.

“This is not a normal case. This is a police case. All details will be collected as evidence in the police investigation. That is why we forwarded the post-mortem report to the police and it is now up to them to issue a statement if they think it will not interfere with their investigation.

“In normal cases, the ministry would inform the family about the cause of death,” he told reporters when met at the ministry’s Aidilfitri event in Putrajaya today.

Dr Subramaniam said this in response to the boy’s father’s statement claiming that the family was not informed by the ministry about the cause of death and that they had learnt about it from a reporter.

Yesterday, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah announced that the death of the 11-year-old tahfiz student was due to leptospirosis and not from trauma or injury.

He also said that the post-mortem results revealed that the boy's death was further complicated by skin necrosis (purpura fulminans) and micro blood coagulation (microthrombi) throughout the bloodstream, which caused the change of skin colour and organ failure.

Thaqif died at the Sultan Ismail Hospital in Johor on April 26 before a scheduled surgery to amputate his right forearm which had bacterial infection, after the boy was believed to have been abused by the assistant warden at his school’s hostel.

Prior to that, both his legs were amputated due to the same infection.

On the cases of rabies, Dr Subramaniam said the ministry was still awaiting results of the blood test involving the suspected fourth victim of rabies in Serian, Sarawak.

“It is not a new case. The victim was bitten by a dog about three months ago but the symptoms became visible only recently, as the incubation process is quite long for rabies. It is probably the same cohort,” he said.

On July 4, two siblings Jackson Mazlan, aged four, and his sister, Monica, aged six, from Kampung Paon, Sungai Rumi, Serian, died at Sarawak General Hospital after being diagnosed as brain-dead and their parents agreed for life support to be withdrawn.

The third victim, a seven-year-old girl, is still being ventilated and has been categorised as critically ill.